Farmworkers use Florida march to pressure other companies
Source: AP
By MIKE SCHNEIDER today
Farmworkers were leading a five-day, 45-mile (72-kilometer) trek on foot this week from one of the poorest communities in Florida to a mansion-lined, oceanfront town that is one of the richest in an effort to pressure retailers to leverage their purchasing power for better worker pay and working conditions.
The farmworkers said they were marching to highlight the Fair Food Program, which has enlisted companies like McDonalds, Walmart, Taco Bell and Whole Foods to use their clout with growers to ensure better working conditions and wages for farmworkers. They hoped to use the march to pressure other companies, like Publix, Wendys and Kroger, to join the program that started in 2011.
The march began Tuesday from the farming community of Pahokee, one of the poorest in Florida, where the median household income is around $30,000. The marchs launching point was a camp where farmworkers were coerced into working for barely any pay by a labor contractor who was convicted and sentenced last year to almost 10 years in prison. The contractor confiscated the Mexican farmworkers passports, demanded exorbitant fees from them and threatened them with deportation or false arrest, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The marchers were on schedule to arrive Saturday in the town of Palm Beach, which has a median household income of almost $169,000 and is lined with the mansions of the rich and famous, including billionaire Nelson Peltz, who is Wendys chairman, and former President Donald Trump.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/florida-agriculture-farmworkers-protest-tomatoes-fair-food-c7502c1f2c5a01d7f611d2d1b959bac9
Cheezoholic
(2,018 posts)Traildogbob
(8,722 posts)Saw a scene from a recent trump KKKlan rally with all the paid fans behind him in GREEN hats with Farmers For Trump on them. You think any of them ever used a hoe to weed in the corn field or hill up the potato plants.
Or strung up tomato vines? Of course everyones favorite was there among the staged farmers, the staged Blacks for Trump clown, that has never missed a single rally and ALWAYS gets prime standing room.
AllaN01Bear
(18,181 posts)and then wither like them?!
Blues Heron
(5,931 posts)Maybe you are talking about some other group, this march is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Blues Heron
(5,931 posts)These people are legit farmworkers from Immokalee Florida.
Traildogbob
(8,722 posts)Of farmers for trump. They are marching because of needing help, which trump gave them zero. And now we should be leading the effort to do so. I believe Biden and Dems will head the call.
Any farmer that think GQP gives a damn, showing up at their leaders KKKlan rallies is a noke. Trump IS the GQP, so farmers in support of him is absurd.
THATS what this has to do with the March.
Backseat Driver
(4,390 posts)MarketWagon local/regional farmers products and businesses through a separate FB page while regional MarketWagon, a truly wonderful local delivery of home-grown farm foods and products, highlights but doesn't link the Kroger logo (yet?). I shop at both fairly exclusively. Though I'm not convinced about the socioeconomic conditions of Ohio's non-factory farmers (or their rural politics). In fact, I suppose both do have payrolls of both retail and on-the-farm helper employees to pay that work hard, but I am quite interested in eating fresher, healthier, more nutritious foods by local farms in my state who practice more stewardship of their animals, soils, and don't add processed chemicals in either.
Farmer-Rick
(10,161 posts)They treat their workers like crap. I quit after 2 months.
When they started routinely exposing us to pesticide chemicals, I quit. We would be picking one field and they would, at the same time, spray the field next to us. The workers in the field being sprayed were in protective gear. The wind picked up the spray and blew it all over us. My shirt was soaked. The foreman yelled at them for it, but it never stopped.